Suggest reorganizing the English Team Videos Wiki page

There are two tabs: English Transcription in progress and English Proofreading in progress, I think these two can be merged, because they already have multiple columns for the multiple stages, its just more confusing when you have two tabs.

For all videos longer than 5-7 minutes you can write a "split" in a pirate pad, or google spread sheet, or whatver that will break the video in "chunks" of around 5 minutes, and urge people to take one chunk at a time, so a newcomer is not exhausted after doing 50 mins of scribing (because you clearly see that there are several videos with partial transcription, which was left undone for a long time
1. For a new video just put 0 - 5min, 5min - 10min and so chunks in the "coordination" place (spreadsheet, pad) and everybody before starting a chunk should write his name, and the current date
2.* For videos which are already transcribed you can split them in a slightly better way to make sure there are no subtitles crossing chunk boundaries (I'm going to talk about this in a different thread, later)

Reorder the columns so that first round of proofreading comes before first round of timeshifting (because if I get it right its good to have one proofread before the lengthy timeshifting, because you don't want to timeshift twice)

Sort the videos by progress, so it would be very easy for a person to pick a video that requires the action that he can perform (scribing, proofing, shifting, final proofing etc).

Each column that specifies a stage in the process can be a link to a wiki/forum explaining how to do it. We already have the tutorials written we just need to link them

I think these changes will make it more clear what is the work that needs to be done, and the "coordination" will not turn away people with limited time (because when you see a video is 45minutes and there is no "coordination" plan most people will just wont take it).

Note on motivation: If you are wondering why, out of the blue, I'm posting this

It is because from time to time I look at that page, because I want to do some timeshifting, and I see that almost all videos are both proofed and timeshifted by brunodc and nomada (there are basically no videos that have 1st round proofreading done, and await shifting). So if it was clearer what should be done I guess new members will pick timeshifting, and old members will do proofreading (and they'll have more time to proofread).

There are videos that are timeshifted but not proofread (for example Capitalism and Other Kids' Stuff). So the "guidelines" were not followed, but maybe that is because the timeshifting column is before the proofreading column.

On the transcribing page half of the videos are left half-done, I'm assuming from new members, because they were too long for one shot, and the people (maybe) just got tired doing it (which is understandable, transcribing is very energy-consuming). But if there was a "coordination" note saying that the video is split in chunks of 5 mins than you can feel that you did some work after transcribing 5 minutes, otherwise somehow it feels less valuable (if you transcribe 15 minutes, but there was no sheet to "mark" your progress).

* this can be done later, and as I said, I'll write some more on the topic later, but lets concentrate on the other points now

Here's what I have to say about your comments : I'm not against the idea of rearranging the table but I'm not the one who came up with it so I can't justify why it was laid out this way...

I fail to see how distributing the workload in spreadsheets or the such is going to help a whole lot, because we've experimented with it for zeitgeist addendum and Future By Design and people still didn't complete their 5 minute parts (3 of them, as I recall).

I think the problem of timeshifters and transcribers giving up is more related to dotSUB, which is far from ideal as a tool to perform those time consuming tasks. Then there's the idea of doing this work with an offline tool, but then things get technical quite quick and I suppose it's yet another deterrent for newcomers, all these technical aspects.

Here's what I have to say about your comments : I'm not against the idea of rearranging the table but I'm not the one who came up with it so I can't justify why it was laid out this way...

Well, I'm not saying anybody should be held responsible or shot in the head right away I'm just proposing a way to make it better. So do you like the idea to join the tabs in general and reorder the columns so they make more sence (because this was the main point of the "proposal").

I fail to see how distributing the workload in spreadsheets or the such is going to help a whole lot, because we've experimented with it for zeitgeist addendum and Future By Design and people still didn't complete their 5 minute parts (3 of them, as I recall).

Its very good that you have experienced that and have some performance metrics already But I still think that splitting will help, maybe not for the new comers, as you mentioned, but for long time users. For example I would start a 5 minute timeshift but would definitely think twice, if the clip was 15 minutes -- maybe because I don't want to do the split myself, because I haven't done it before and there are fewer examples I can follow. But if splitting was a common practice than I would split a longer video myself (if it was not already splitted) and do some work on one of the pieces.

I think the problem of timeshifters and transcribers giving up is more related to dotSUB, which is far from ideal as a tool to perform those time consuming tasks. Then there's the idea of doing this work with an offline tool, but then things get technical quite quick and I suppose it's yet another deterrent for newcomers, all these technical aspects.

I agree, that dotsub is just not good enough for timeshifting and transcribing, and maybe also rearranging strings. About the offline tools -- they are pretty straight forward to use, maybe about technical aspects you mean installing the software? Its true that it gets more involved (install this, install that, learn how to use), but in general any nontrivial task will require you to "invest" some effort before you actually start. So if a new comer is not willing to invest that much than maybe he/she shouldn't be doing timeshifting

Also a better survey of offline tools, as well as usage/installation instructions will help a lot, and this should actually be in our TODO list

It's a free tool and developed in English, so I believe it could be one of the best options. I'm convinced that it's the most convenient and best software to adjust the timestamp. It's also easy to use after you understand how to manipulate it.

I think, that in the videos page (http://wiki.zmlingteam.org/w/Linguistic_…a_Center/Videos), only Douglas Mallette Workshop Caux has a spreadsheet link, that I cannot open, because I don't have permissions. Also there are many videos that are more than a person can do in a reasonable time, without such spreadsheet. I'm just saying we should do this for all bigger videos, put a template to one such spreadsheet, make sure it is accessible by all concerned parties and explain how is it created in a tutorial.

Hi fellows! I wanted to reply to this but somehow I couldn't get here, probably blocked mentally to develop an answer. Now with your replies it is much easier somehow

The reasons for abandon of the works or lack of participation don't seem to be generally related with organization of the tables or splitting the videos in 5min chunks. Some of them don't finish the video even when it is a small one, and others do 1 video in extra speed or 2 or 3 videos in a row and then abandon saying they have no time now because of their private life. Obviously, they went too fast and we didn't helped them to correct that in time. Or, as we are being able to do/develop it only now, we weren't able to show the results of their works so they could feel reward in the task.
Transcriptions and timeshifting are hard tasks, and also the tools, as Bruno said, and very few people did more than 1 video, even when using offline tools.

There is not enough people participating to justify a lack of or inadequate information that would cause us to timeshift a video before the 1st round of proofreading. We have contact with them all and everyone has been receiving much feedback, depending of the time they hanged around, of course And the videos that were processed in that order are older than the guideline.

It is redundant, but as far as I'm concerned, I like this configuration, it allows me to see what just came out and needs transcribing without sifting through columns and I find it easier to introduce to newcomers